I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way…

On Social Conditioning

Travelling solo is awesome for many reasons. One of them is that while abroad, your old habits are left behind and you have nothing familiar to fall back on. You’re forced to act differently and think differently. Somehow, you become a different person.

While in Montreal, like anyone living at home, I hang around the same people, I drink at the same places, I cook the same food. I’ve been conditioned to stick to certain habits that came to be mine throughout the years. But the minute the plane takes off, they all go out the window.

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I like to say that I do social travelling, that I get to know places and cultures through people. And I’m a pretty social guy to start with, but I’ve come to realize that while abroad, my social boundaries have no limit. I didn’t know that part of me existed.

I’ve come to do things I would never even come close to consider doing back home. I talk to strangers, salute the neighbours, and walk up to groups of girls saying: “Hey, can I join?”. I mean, I don’t think I lack any self-confidence, but I never do this at home. That behaviour comes to me only while abroad, away from my old ways of doing things.

Something else I’ve noticed is that the changes in my behaviour are not permanent. However far away from my home-self I get while abroad, I always come back to my old habits after coming back home…

But that was until then.

Because as I was making my way home from Brazil after 7 months spent abroad, I promised myself not to let it happen again. I promised myself to keep the travelling spirit present in me, to make it a permanent thing. I wanted to stay the outgoing, outspoken person I was in Rio. I wanted to consciously disobey social conditioning. I wanted to keep on discovering, meeting, and trying new things.

I was going to keep on doing what I was doing abroad: meeting people randomly, in the street, in the metro, in the park. And I was going to do it my way: with wit, smile and humour, and while always being 100% genuine.

I wanted to be a traveller in my own town.

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On January 22nd, I landed again in Montreal and settled in my new flat. After meeting with my new roommates and setting my old Ikea desk back up again, armed with my new life resolutions, I made my way to the grocery store on Sherbrooke St.

My list consisted of basic survival items: orange juice, coffee, sliced turkey, eggs, bread. As I walked up to the meat counter, I ran into an absolutely stunning latina. The long black hair, the eye lashes, the look, the walk, the grin, the hips, the attitude: she had the whole package. I don’t have a “type” for women, but if I did, that would be it right there.

“This is it!”, I thought. “This is life challenging me to live up to my new life resolutions on my very first day back home! It couldn’t have been any clearer!”

Yet this was Montreal. And this was a grocery store. My natural reflexes were shouting at me, telling me to pay, look down and head home. It was a heart wrenching inner struggle.

But when I saw the dark eyed lady pick up her grocery bags with both hands and head towards the door at the same time as me, bringing to me the opportunity to live up to my challenge on a silver platter, I figured that there was no choice: the universe was conspiring for me to do it.

As she was walking towards the exit, she had to slow down to let the doors time to slide open. I caught up to her and we walked out one after another, without having the doors close in between. She glanced back… 1-0 me.

We both started heading West on Sherbrooke. I had two blocks to walk before turning left. We got to the first street corner and the green turned light: we crossed. I was 2-3 steps behind her. This is where it was going to be happening.

I don’t do lines. Never did, never will. I was going to do this and I was going to do it my way: 100% genuine, no game, nothing phony, no small talk, nothing prepared. I was going to say whatever came to mind.

– “Uhh… Excuse me, mad’moiselle.”
– “Yes?”

There! Right off the bat, she knew I was a well mannered, bilingual, born and raised Montrealer. I wouldn’t have wanted her to think I was some kind of unshaven hitchhiking hippie, right? This was going way too well… 2-0 me.

The ball was in my court. I was going to come up with something, but what was it going to be? How far away from the social norms and conventions would I dare to go? Was it going to be shocking? Unsettling? Original? Funny? Witty? Or plain brutally honest?

And that’s when it came out…

– “Hum… You need some help with those bags?”

Oh what would I have given to have that one back…

I had just pulled the old “Can I help you carrying those bags ma’am?” line… Wow… Very lame. I couldn’t believe that was the best I could come up with. You can’t come back from something like that. It was game over and I knew it.

– “No, I’m good. Thanks.”, she said, before walking away.

One thing was for sure: I was back in Montreal, and I was back to being my old self again.

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The girl is not the point, here… I mean, there’s plenty more hip-shaking latinas in the sea, right? The point is that I wanted to stay away from norms and conventions, yet I had just come up with the cheesiest, most etiquette abiding, socially conditioned line ever.

I guess familiar environments are just big magnets that pull you more and more towards your old habits as you get closer. And that there’s no point in fighting them. So much for “living by my own rules”, eh?

good post ..you pulled the reigns in on this one you should now post the “what could have happened scenerio” im sure it will live up to your previous blogs..im not even sure what country you arein now but good luck wherever you are..
EH